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John Warnock Hinckley, Jr., was born in Ardmore, Oklahoma, on May 29,
1955. The youngest of three children, Johnís home life seemed picture perfect.
His father, John W. Hinckley, Sr., was a successful and wealthy Chairman
and President of the Vanderbilt Energy Corporation while JoAnn Moore Hinckley,
Johnís mother, was a homemaker who doted on her children, especially John,
whom she felt was more introverted than his older siblings. Johnís brother,
Scott Hinckley, graduated from Vanderbilt University and became Vice-President
of his fatherís oil and gas business. Johnís older sister, Diane, was popular
and outgoing, a straight "A" student in high school and a graduate of SMU
in Dallas.

In the early years of Johnís life, it seemed as though John would follow
the path to popularity and success that his elder siblings had established.
When John was four years old, the Hinckley family moved to Dallas, Texas.
During his elementary school years, John was the quarterback of the school
football team and also played basketball, earning the title "best basketball
player" for his elementary school basketball team. When John was in the
sixth grade, his family moved to the exclusive suburb of Highland Park.
During junior high, John was elected President of his seventh grade and
ninth grade classes, managed his schoolís football team, and took up the
guitar.

During high school, John became increasing reclusive. He rarely brought
friends home and would spend hours alone in his room, strumming his guitar
and listening to the Beatles. Although his parents attributed his lack
of social interaction to shyness, his increasing withdrawal from society
is evident from a classmateís description of him as "a non-guy" in high
school.

In 1973, after graduating from high school, John and his family moved
to Evergreen, Colorado, the new headquarters for his fatherís business.
In the fall of that same year, John enrolled at Texas Tech, in Lubbock.
After finishing his freshman year, John moved to Dallas to live with his
sister, Diane, and her husband and son. In 1975, John returned to Texas
Tech during the spring semester. A year later, in April of 1976, John dropped
out of college and flew to California to pursue his dream of becoming a
songwriter. Living in an apartment in Hollywood, John saw the movie "Taxi
Driver" fifteen times that summer, writing his parents about a make-believe
girlfriend
named Lynn Collins modeled on one of the movieís main characters. Many
believe that Hinckleyís attempted assassination of Reagan was based on
this movie, the story of an American psychopath who stalks a political
candidate. Frustrated with what he termed the "phony, impersonal Hollywood
scene," John left California in September of 1976 and returned to Evergreen,
where he worked as a busboy at a dinner club for a few months.

In the spring of 1977, Hinckley went back to California, but again found
it unsatisfying and returned to Texas Tech, remaining there through the
summer of 1978. When John returned to the university, he switched his major
from Business Administration to English. During the seven years that John
attended college, he dropped in and out of classes without ever acquiring
a college degree. John also formed no meaningful relationships while at
Texas Tech; fellow classmates stated that they rarely saw John in the company
of other people.

In August of 1979, John bought his first gun, a thirty-eight caliber
pistol, and began target-shooting. A self-taken photograph of John in December
of 1979 portrays him holding a gun to his temple. According to defense
experts, Hinckley played Russian Roulette twice in November and December
of 1979.

In 1980, John continued to add to his gun collection, purchasing the
exploding-head Devastators that he eventually used in his assassination
attempt. In that same year, John experienced various health ailments, and
began receiving prescriptions for anti-depressants and tranquilizers.

In response to an article in a May 1980 issue of People regarding Jodie
Fosterís enrollment at Yale University, Hinckley enrolled in a Yale writing
course so that he could be near the young actress who had made such a deep
impression on him in "Taxi Driver." At Yale, he attempted to establish
contact with Jodie, and left letters and poems in her mailbox. He managed
to have two telephone conversations with her, during which he assured her
that he was not a "dangerous person." His deep obsession with Foster, however,
coincided with his obsession with assassination. Hinckley believed that
achieving notoriety by assassinating the President of the United States
would help him gain what he termed her "respect and love."

In the fall of 1980, Hinckley decided to stalk President Carter. On
October 2nd of that year, Hinckley went to one of Carterís campaign appearances,
but left his gun collection, now totaling three handguns and two rifles,
in his hotel room. When Hinckley went to Nashville during another of Carterís
campaign stops, he was arrested at the airport when airport security detected
handguns in his suitcases. The guns were confiscated and Hinckley was fined
$62.50 and sent on his way. Soon after this incident, Hinckley bought two
more twenty-two caliber handguns while
visiting his sister.

At his parentsí insistence, Hinckley began seeing a psychiatrist in
Colorado. The psychiatrist thought that Johnís problems stemmed from emotional
immaturity, and recommended to Johnís parents that John be cut off financially
and forced to make it on his own.

After failing to get a job at the end of February of 1981 as heíd promised
his parents, John flew to Hollywood. Staying there only one day, John Hinckley
Jr. boarded a bus and checked into the Park Central Hotel in Washington
D.C. on March 29, 1981. The next day, Monday March 30th, John wrote a letter
to Jodie Foster describing his plan to assassinate President Reagan, to
impress her with his "historical deed," left his hotel room and took a
cab to the Washington Hilton where Reagan was to speak to a labor convention
at 1:45 p.m.

At 1:30 p.m., John Hinckley Jr. stepped forward from a crowd of television
reporters and fired six shots from a Rohm R6-14 revolver. The bullets from
Hinckleyís gun struck Ronald Reagan in the left chest, Press Secretary
James Brady in the left temple, Officer Thomas Delahanty in the neck, and
Security Agent Timothy J. McCarthy in the stomach. Hinckley was immediately
arrested, and his trial began over a year later, on May 4, 1982. On June
21, 1982, after seven weeks of testimony and three days of deliberation
by the jury, John Hinckley Jr. was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
He currently resides at St. Elizabethís Mental Hospital in Washington,
D.C.

Jodie Foster

Born Alicia Christian Foster on November, 19, 1962, Jodie Foster
made her acting debut in a Coppertone television commercial in 1966. She
starred in the controversial Martin Scorsese film Taxi Driver in 1976 as
a teenage prostitute. This film won her an Oscar nomination for best supporting
actress; unfortunately, it also won her the unwanted attentions of a troubled
young man named John Hinckley. He soon learned from a magazine article
that she would be attending Yale University and took it as the perfect
opportunity to meet her.

In her younger years, Jodie attended the elite school Lycee Francais
in Los Angeles and graduated as class valedictorian in 1980. In pursuit
of higher education, Jodie went on to attend Yale in New Haven, Connecticut.
She had hoped to be a typical college student; but John Hinckley's obsession
with her dashed any hopes of her blending in with the other Yalies.

After the Hinckley incident, Jodie bounced back and went on to win two
Oscars for her performances in The Accused (1988) and The Silence of the
Lambs (1991). She also made her directorial debut in the 1991 film Little
Man Tate; the story of a child prodigy torn between his working-class mom
and his teacher.

To date, she refuses to publicly comment on the incident involving John
Hinckley. She is well-known for canceling interviews or walking out if
a reporter tries to question her about Hinckley. As recently as 1991, she
canceled an interview with NBC's Today Show when she was told Hinckley's
name would be mentioned in her introduction, but they probably wouldn't
ask her about it.

Her only response about the incident came in 1981 in the article Why
Me?, published in Esquire magazine. In the interview, she stated that she
was running across the Yale campus with a friend when she learned President
Reagan had been shot. At the time, she had no idea that the shooter was
the strange man who kept calling and pestering her with love letters. When
Hinckley's motivations came to light, the press "swarmed through the campus
like a cavalry invasion. I couldn't protect myself from being trampled."
The news of Hinckley's motivations hit her emotionally like a ton of bricks.
When she learned that her photographs and college address were found in
Hinckley's motel room, she was shaken.

Twenty months after the shooting, she wrote of the incident: "My body
jerked in painful convulsions. I hurt. I was no longer thinking of the
President, of the assailant, of the crime, of the press. I was crying for
myself. Me, the unwilling victim. The one who would pay in the end. The
one who paid all along - and, yes, keeps paying." She gave a press conference,
answered a few questions, and then attempted to return to student life.

After hearing of Hinckley's not guilty verdict, Foster was "horrified"
and the wave of emotions returned again. She was further angered by a poem
published in the 1982 National Enquirer. The poem's author? John
Hinckley. The poem contained the lines "I have come to shoot you down with
my bloody gun . . . look here at my bloody knife, I think I'll stab you
first, deep into your bloody heart, it should quench my thirst." Jodie
was furious and took the poem as a direct threat against her life. Her
attorneys put an end to the fiasco by threatening to sue the magazine.

Unfortunately for Foster, Hinckley was not the only "crazy" obsessed
with her. Shortly after Hinckley's arrest, a second man, Edward Richardson,
while in the process of finishing Hinckley's job and killing the President.
He also claimed to be obsessed with Foster and admitted to visiting Yale
with the intention of killing her. He described following her across the
Yale campus with a loaded gun in his pocket. He changed plans after deciding
she was "too pretty."

Dr. John Hopper

Dr. Hopper is a psychiatrist practicing in Evergreen, Colorado who
testified as a defense expert witness. Dr. Hopper began psychiatric treatment
with John Hinckley, Jr. in October 1980, five months before the March 1981
assassination attempt. From October 1980 to February 1981, Hopper had a
dozen sessions with Hinckley; the last one only a month before the shooting.

Unfortunately Dr. Hopper failed to recognize Hinckley's deepening depression
and growing inability to cope with frustration. Hopper treated Hinckley
with biofeedback techniques and in February 1981, Hopper advised Hinckley's
parents to force John to leave home as part of a plan to make John less
dependent on his parents. Hopper later testified that he didn't consider
his young patient to be "mentally ill" because Hinckley had never said
anything to indicate he was a dangerous patient. Jack and JoAnn Hinckley
(John's parents) followed Dr. Hopper's advice and told their son he would
be on his own from here on out. Jack Hinckley would later classify following
Hopper's advice to kick John out "the greatest mistake of my life." Psychiatric
experts later agreed that forcing John from home severed his last ties
with reality and pushed him over the edge; he would shoot Reagan one month
later.

Following the assassination, Dr. Hopper was sued by all of Hinckley's
shooting victims with the exception of President Reagan. Brady, Delahanty,
and McCarthy alleged that Dr. Hopper had inadequately treated John Hinckley
and asked for $14 million dollars damages. They claimed Hopper, as a psychiatric
professional, should have recognized that Hinckley was dangerous and put
him in a hospital. They further alleged Hopper misdiagnosed Hinckley as
having minor problems and rejected his parents' suggestion to institutionalize
the younger Hinckley. Finally, they argued Hopper failed to warn police
of the reasonable likelihood that Hinckley would attempt a political assassination
despite Hinckley's admission that his "mind was on the breaking point."

The suit was later dismissed in the case of Brady
v. Hopper, 570 F. Supp. 1333 (D. Colo. 1983), aff'd, 751 F.2d 329 (10th
Cir. 1984). The United States District Court held that because Hinckley
never threatened anybody, Dr. Hopper could not have known Hinckley was
dangerous; or warned Brady and the others of the danger.

Vincent Fuller

Vincent Fuller served as senior attorney for the defense in the John
Hinckley trial. Hinckley's parents hired Fuller from the Washington D.C.
based law firm of Williams and Connolly, a firm known for defending famous
people in white collar criminal cases. Fuller's claim to fame came in 1982
when he won an acquittal by reason of insanity for his client, would-be
presidential assassin John W. Hinckley, Jr.

Since the Hinckley trial, Fuller has defended other noteworthy clients,
including boxing promoter Don King and ear-biter Mike Tyson in his trial
on charges of rape in 1992. His fee for defending Tyson was $5,000 per
day, amounting to a grand total of 5 million dollars. His record is not
unblemished, however. Although he successfully defended King against charges
of tax fraud, his defense of Tyson resulted in a six-year jail sentence
for the boxer. After the Tyson verdict, many critics claimed that Fuller
inadequately defended Tyson because he failed to object to a piece of key
prosecution evidence.

Roger Adelman

Roger Adelman served as the government's senior prosecutor during the
trial of John W. Hinckley, Jr. He served as an assistant U.S. Attorney
for eighteen years and then became a partner in the Washington law firm
of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart, which specializes in White Collar Criminal
Defense. Adelman taught evidence and trial practice at Georgetown University
Law Center for a number of years, and participated in a variety of symposiums
in the United States and abroad. During his eighteen years with the United
States Attorney's office, Adelman tried around two hundred and fifty jury
cases, including claims of political corruption, conspiracy, bribery, fraud
and murder Although best known for his participation in the Hinckley
trial, Adelman also prosecuted former Representative Richard Kelly in the
Abscam political corruption trials.

Dr. Park Dietz

Dr. Park Dietz, a thirty-three years old member of the Harvard Medical
School faculty at the time of the Hinckley trial, presented five days of
expert pychiatric testimony for the prosecution. All observers agree
that Dietz was a star. Dietz's precise answers, presented in a "high, prim"
voice, were memorable and effective--not surprising for someone who had
appeared as a forensic psychiatrist for the prosecution in over one hundred
cases.

Dietz described John Hinckley as a spoiled, lazy, self-concerned, manipulative
rich kid. According to Dietz, Hinckley suffered from various common
mental disorders--but he was not severely mentally ill, as defense psychiatrists
maintained: "Mr. Hinckley has not been psychotic at any time." Dietz
concluded that because Hinckley had not been "occupationally successful,"
he turned "turned to high-publicity crime." He was "in love with
himself." He was not obsessed with Jodie Foster, only infatuated.
Dietz suggested that Hinckley might be feigning insanity to avoid serving
his time in prison.

After the Hinckley trial, Dr. Dietz built a stellar career as a forensic
psychiatrist, appearing as an expert witness in the such celebrated cases
as that of serial-killer Jeffrey Dahmer. He keeps a complete set
of serial-killer trading cards in a wall-length display case in his home,
along with such other items as antiquarian books on criminology and a human
skull.

An alumni of John Hopkins Medical School, Dr. Dietz was profiled in
the John Hopkins Magazine. Dale Krieger's profile of Dietz concluded:

One comes away from a long conversation with
Park Dietz wondering what it takes to disengage that formidable analytic
intelligence and cause him to recoil in horror. One answer is audio tapes;
some serial killers record the torture of their victims, and Dietz finds
these tapes hard to bear. But something in him still has to know why a
human being would do such an awful thing. And he knows that because of
his work, some people will be prevented from doing such things to new victims.

Gazing out at the California night, he says, "I've been
very lucky. I get to use everything I've got, often in events that matter,
where I get to make a difference." He stretches out his legs and adds,
"It doesn't get any better than that."

Trial observer and author of a book on the Hinckley trial, Lincoln
Caplan, described the defense's lead psychiatric expert as resembling "Father
Time," with his gaunt appearance, shoulder-length hair, and gray beard.
For three days, Dr. William Carpenter--in a "smoky drawl" with "meandering
answers"--provided the testimony about John Hinckley's troubled mental
state that would convince the jury to find the defendant not guilty for
reason of insanity.

At the time of trial, Dr. Carpenter was director of the Maryland Psychiatric
Research Center, a professor at the University of Maryland Medical School,
and a recognized expert on severe mental illness--especially schizophrenia.
Carpenter was educated at Wofford College and at the Wake Forest Medical
School.

Dr. Carpenter based his diagnosis of "process schizophrenia" on forty-five
hours of interviews with Hinckley conducted over nearly a one-year period.
In a "calm, sympathetic, yet clinical" manner, Carpenter told the jury
that Hinckley's schizophrenia developed gradually. He became increasingly
unable to distinguish external reality from his own internal fantasies.
Carpenter concluded that Hinckley felt that he was on an out-of-control
"roller coaster." He had numerous destructive impulses, according
to Carpenter, but among all of them "the most persistent was the the destruction
of Jodie Foster." Carpenter concluded that although Hinckley appreciated
the wrongfulness of his conduct "intellectually," but not emotionally.

In 1989, Dr. Carpenter testified in another famous insanity murder case,
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs John DuPont.